A family in Delaware has witnessed a loved one descend into madness. According to the Dallas Observer, multiple members of the Leek family confirmed that a relative had left her husband and children in the Mid-Atlantic to follow a fringe QAnon cult leader to Dallas last month. There she was in charge of mixing a chemical cocktail containing chlorine dioxide, an industrial disinfectant, with other substances that she and her fellow cultists drink to combat COVID. According to a family member, “she was proud to tell us that she was the one mixing it up and giving it to everybody.” Is Kool-Aid one of the ingredients?*
Any rational person would think this absurd. But not so long ago a scientifically illiterate President proposed a similar remedy to the nation and even added a UV light bath.
"So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or just a very powerful light — and I think you said that hasn't been checked because of the testing. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you're going to test that, too."
Trump added: "I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that."
This isn’t the only QAnon madness in Dallas. In November, a group of them gathered in AT&T Discovery Plaza to witness the return of JFK Jr. They believe his death was faked. And that he was going to reappear to become a newly reinstated Trump’s VP. He’s been a no-show so far.
Until the summer of 2020, Roseanne Boyland was a fairly typical American. She was a member of a large Catholic family, where everybody was in everybody’s business. Then her family noticed that she was becoming increasingly withdrawn. She spent Christmas Day with family, but she was glued to her phone. And she apparently spent all of Christmas night on the Internet ‘researching’ QAnon child abduction claims. On January 6, she went to DC, took part in the MAGA insurrection, and died on the steps of Capitol Hill. The official cause of death was an Adderall overdose. But it could have been that she was trampled to death. Either way it was an addiction that killed her. As her family explained, she had had substance abuse problems in the past, and now they believed her addictive personality had led her to an unquestioning adoration of Trump.
People who believe everything, or people who believe nothing, are consistent. Cultists are different. They will seemingly believe everything except the truth. If someone swears by vaccination, but thinks that there’s no harm in adding horse paste and bleach to their health regime, we would think them excessive. But it takes a cultist to swear by horse paste and bleach while rejecting vaccination.
People think of cults as fringe groups of nutters, like the followers of Jim Jones, the Heaven’s Gate fanatics, or the Moonies. But what of Scientology? John Travolta and Tom Cruise don’t appear to be insane. But they believe that 75 million years ago, Xenu (sometimes Xemu), the tyrant ruler of the “Galactic Confederacy” brought billions of beings, called Thetans, to Earth in spacecraft resembling Douglas DC-8 airliners, where he stacked them around volcanoes in which he detonated hydrogen bombs. After which, the Thetans clustered together, stuck to the bodies of the living, and continue to do this today.
And they believe this despite the fact the religion’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, was a science-fiction writer — who once said, "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.” It couldn’t be more obvious that Hubbard with an opportunistic charlatan if he had “I am a fraud” tattooed on his forehead.
Mormonism is now a highly influential religion. It numbers Governors, Senators, sports stars, successful business people, and celebrities among its number. Mitt Romney was even a finalist for the Presidency. However, the religion is founded on the Book of Mormon, (full name: “The Book of Mormon; an account written by the hand of Mormon upon plates taken from the plates of Nephi”) which was allegedly written in indecipherable characters known as ‘reformed Egyptian’ on golden plates found by Joseph Smith in upstate New York in 1827. Smith was able to translate the plates with the assistance of the Angel Maroni and a brown stone. I’m not sure what role the brown stone played.
Before mainstream Christians start feeling superior, they should consider that their religion is founded on the belief that God impregnated a virgin who gave birth to a child, who 33 years later had to be nailed to a cross to bring salvation to the human race. And Catholics further believe that every Sunday they are literally eating his body and drinking his blood. It’s hard to differentiate those kinds of beliefs from ancient Greek and Roman myths. Especially when you add in speaking in tongues and snake worship.
There’s a fine line between a cult and a religion. Although the observation that a religion is a cult that outlives its founder is a useful definition.
We are all entitled to believe whatever it is that we choose to believe. My advice would be to believe in something that doesn’t kill you. And no one has the right to inflict their beliefs on other people or use them as justification to hurt them.
*NB. At Jonestown, Jim Jones added Flavor Aid, not Kool-Aid, to the cyanide.